Videogames: dangerous or not? (Part 1)
Videos games: dangerous or not?
November 21st, 2013.
Public opinion and the media both seem to consider that video games - particularly violent ones - make young people aggressive. Yet some researchers have challenged these "certainties" in a dissertation and subsequent scientific paper. Not everyone is lucky enough to participate in a study in which they mainly play video games. Yet this is exactly what happened to 43 young boys. As part of her graduate dissertation in Psychology (1), Roxane Toniutti had boys from primary schools in the Province of Liège play a video game for 15 minutes. Some of them played a combat game, while others played a football game. But none of them were aware that as they (calmly?) played, they were helping to elucidate a debate that continues to divide psychologists, the media, and public opinion: do violent video games make young people more aggressive? And are these games potentially dangerous for adolescents and pre-adolescents, particularly those considered "at-risk"? "Since 1999 and the Colombine massacre, perpetrated by two teens who regularly played violent video games, there have been a number of media stories unequivocally blaming these kinds of games for aggressive acts. I didn't agree that the debate was so clear-cut, that the facts were presented as established, and that they only took one variable into consideration: the game. So I wanted to see what the literature on the subject had to say, and conduct my own study to find possible answers to questions that were rarely or infrequently investigated," explains Roxanne Toniutti. This dissertation work was conducted under the direction of Cécile Mathys, Doctor in Psychology and Assistant Professor in the University of Liège's Department of Psychology and Clinics of Human Systems, and Michel Born, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology of Delinquency and Psychological Development. The results were surprising, and were presented in a scientific article published in the Revue de Psychoéducation (University of Montreal). It offers grist to the mill for those who don't believe that video games are the sole source of all problems. It also opens the door to further reflection on preventative measures for this type of medium, and strategies that focus on both young people and their parents.
Teaching violence?
"The literature includes two main schools of thought regarding whether violent content in video games has an impact on aggressive behaviour,” explains the psychologist. Some specialists believe that these games have harmful effects that increase aggressive behaviour. The presence of blood, guns, the size of the screen, the type of perception, whether the player wins or loses, as well as their age (adolescence) and emotional state all have an impact on behaviour. According to other specialists, the opposite is true: there are no harmful side effects to playing video games. Researchers sometimes even suggest that these games have a positive impact on behaviour (serving as a cathartic release of aggressive impulses in the virtual world) and even cognitive skills.
Furthermore, "some studies have also examined the mental processes that led to aggressive acts," observes Roxane Toniutti. “They are based on two main models (the General Affective Aggression Model and Social Information Processing), and take into account the player's cognitive variables, as well as their patterns, personality, and affects, which can be influenced by their social interactions, experiences, and education."
"These studies show that violent media do indeed have an affective influence: the person may have more frequent aggressive thoughts and emotions that may increase the likelihood that they will act aggressively. Indeed, when a young person's patterns, emotions, affects, and thoughts are encoded in their memory as hostile, they will more easily - and mistakenly - interpret neutral or ambiguous information as hostile or malevolent, and may then respond violently."
This interpretation error is called "attribution bias", and takes two forms. Instrumental hostile attribution bias is when someone attributes a hostile intention to a peer's ambiguous behaviour that may have negative repercussions on their belongings or physical integrity. The relational hostile attribution bias occurs when someone attributes a hostile intention to a peer's ambiguous behaviour and this leads to problems in the subject's social relationships. Boys are more likely to exhibit the first bias (as well as aggressive physical behaviour) while girls are more likely to exhibit the second bias.
An error in perception. In any case, given that hostile patterns caused by consumption of violent media, among other things, dominate the subject's memory, “the authors observed that the interpretation error made by aggressive children confirms their general perception of the world as malevolent," notes the psychologist. “Consequently, they view an aggressive response as legitimate. " And the peer that is on the receiving end of this aggressive behaviour is also likely to attribute a hostile intention to the aggressive subject. In their eyes, the aggressive child is ill-intentioned, and they will respond to them negatively in turn. A new cycle begins, which further reinforces hostile attributions, aggressive behaviours, and social rejection. According to the psychologist, "the potential link between hostile attribution bias and aggressive behaviour has been studied extensively. However, few studies have tried to determine whether a violent video game can influence the player's internal state of being, and then how they interpret a situation". Kirsh's 1998 experimental study attempted to get a clearer picture of the situation. In the study, one group of 9 and 10 year-old children played a violent video game, while another played a non-violent game. The research protocol consisted in asking them to interpret images in which their peers were in ambiguous provocation situations. The results? The older the subjects and the more often they lost, the more they showed a hostile attribution bias. And this bias increased the probability that a subject who played violent video games would respond aggressively in situations of ambiguous provocation.
Testing before… and after. Roxanne Tonuitti wanted to go even further, add to this data, understand the mental processes that lead to aggressive behaviour, and see what biases or variables increased them. Since she wasn't satisfied with the conflation of violent video games and aggressive behaviour, she decided to investigate the ways in which the different elements were connected. And she focused on one of the cognitive aspects of aggressiveness, hostile attribution bias. "Thanks to a quasi-experimental protocol (editor's note: the term quasi refers to the fact that the young people were deliberately divided into two groups, according to their level of social vulnerability), her study was able to measure the effects of the game more precisely by asking a small number of young people, boys in this case, to play a video game, and interviewing them before and after they played," explains Cécile Mathys. In fact, one of the unique aspects of this study was that it measured hostile attribution bias twice: before the children played the game, and after.
The psychologist also tried to determine whether the hypothetical link between violent video games and hostile attribution bias would be more present in a socially-vulnerable population. This term refers to people who, because of an accumulation of negative experiences, are more likely to have a negative perception of society. As a result, they may be more likely to exhibit aggressive and delinquent behaviour - delinquency is a topic that is close to the author's heart - as compared to those who are better integrated into society. Again, "very few studies have looked at hostile attribution bias in relation to a population's risk factor," observes Roxanne Toniutti. “Yet this could provide information about an important question: do video games promote aggressive behaviour only in the presence of other risk factors? " The goal of the research was therefore to see if playing violent games increased young people's hostile attribution bias by taking different variables into account: the time played or simply the act of playing, the content of the game (violent or not), and the player's level of social vulnerability. And she also examined the possible link between video game content and social vulnerability.
No blood, no dismemberment. It turns out that finding adolescents for the study was no easy matter. However, the graduate student was able to gather a sample of 43 boys (91% Belgian) from 4 schools, including two with students that were more socially vulnerable (schools with positive discrimination programmes). The group of highly socially-vulnerable boys (which was determined by a test given beforehand) was then randomly split into one group that played a violent video game, and another group that played a non-violent game (10 subjects in each sub-group). The same procedure was followed for the other group of children (12 and 11 subjects, respectively).
The young people already knew how to play these 2 video games: a fighting game (King Of Fighters XII), and a football game (FIFA: 10), for the violent and non-violent content, respectively. These games were selected according to the PEGI(1) ratings appropriate for their age. The violent game didn't show any blood or dismemberment, and the characters were drawn in manga style.
Before and after playing the game, all the students answered questions after looking at 8 vignettes that showed an equal number of instrumental and relational provocation scenes.
